(246f) Optimization of Water Storage and Distribution Systems for Cities

Optimization
of Water Storage and Distribution Systems for Cities

Fabricio
Nápoles-Rivera,¹ Medardo Serna-González¹, Mahmoud M.
El-Halwagi,^2,3José María Ponce-Ortega¹

⁽¹⁾ Chemical
Engineering Department, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás
de Hidalgo, Morelia, Mich., 58060, México.

⁽²⁾
Chemical Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX,
77843, USA

⁽³⁾ Adjunct
Faculty at the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, King Abdulaziz
University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Water
scarcity in several regions of the world, along with the continuous increase in
the water demands in the cities due to population growth, is currently one of
the major concerns for the governments. In consequence, developing strategies
for the appropriate use of water resources has become of paramount interest. One
of the main concerns consists in the depletion of water resources. Thus,
options such as the use of desalinated seawater and the collection of
precipitation in storage tanks, artificial ponds and aquifers, which in the
past were considered unpractical and expensive are now being considered as
attractive alternatives for common use and replenishment of water bodies. An
additional concern is the appropriate distribution for domestic and
agricultural use, which commonly is based solely in immediate demands, and not
in projected demands. This causes water droughts and the reduction in water
supply in some cases. Therefore, it is important to establish systematic
procedures for the appropriate planning and distribution of the available
resources. In this regard, this paper presents a mathematical programming
approach for the optimal water distribution planning in a macroscopic water
system. The problem is based on the representation presented in Figure 1.
The proposed approach considers natural bodies as water sources and the
possibility of installing storage tanks and artificial ponds for the collection
of precipitation in a given location. The main sinks are domestic and
agricultural users for which an optimal water distribution schedule can be devised
satisfying demand constraints. A case study from the city of Morelia
in México is solved to prove the applicability of the proposed approach; the
results show the potential advantages of using a systematic procedure for the
water distribution planning in a city considering alternative water sources.

Figure
1. Schematic model representation.